India to get aid from Climate Fund: Hales

"Typical projects will be power generation, transmission, distribution, energy efficiency, renewable energy and co2 (carbon dioxide) emission offsets activities," he said.

The fund, which some other countries will receive besides India, has been established by the US Energy Association (USEA) and the International Utility Efficiency Partnerships Inc. (IUEP), with funding support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The selected projects, he said, must be suitable for follow-on funding from private sector financial institutions, export credit agenciesand/or multilateral development institutions.

Meanwhile, USAID in a booklet, "Climatic Change Intitiative 1998-2002", distributed to the council members stressed that greenhouse gas emissions in India required the active involvement and participation of the private sector. On projects in India, the booklet said USAID will work with a wide range of Indian partner organisations in implementing climate change activities. It said collaboration with the Indian National Thermal Power Corporation and IDBI will continue.

This will be supplemented by links to non-governmental organisations, such as development alternatives and the Tata Energy Research Institute; academic institutes such as the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research; besides industry associations like the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry; and others involved in transportation, city planning and waste management.

While noting itscontribution to restore India’s rapidly depleting forests, USAID said local communities had devised plans to meet their local needs with its aid. The Asia Forest Network was supporting organisational reforms at the state level to facilitate decentralisation of management. USAID claims that its efforts in the Indian energy sector will avoid four million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year. Additionally, the agency hopes to increase the percentage of total installed power capacity derived from clean technologies — from two per cent in 1998 to six per cent in 2000.USAID’s activities will also accelerate intitutional, policy and legal changes to increase efficiency in energy supply and end use. Electrical power generation, USAID points out, is the largest source of greenhouse gases and is responsible for 71 million tonnes of emitted carbon or 48 per cent of the carbon emitted from fossil fuels in India.

The second largest contributor is the transportation sector, excluding railways, which contributes11.3 per cent of total Indian carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels.